Kyle Murray had never bought a lottery ticket in Canada before.
Despite living in the country for several years, the 39-year-old United States native decided the Aug. 20 Lotto Max draw would be his first after his wife, who just delivered their new baby, asked he do so.
Jennifer Stuart-Flynn, 33, and Murray had just returned home to Iroquois Falls, Ont., from a Toronto hospital where Stuart-Flynn had delivered their baby after a high-risk pregnancy.
Murray was waiting at the Timmins airport to pick up his mother, who was coming to help with the newborn, when Stuart-Flynn texted him, asking him to buy a Lotto Max ticket after seeing on social media the jackpot was at $70 million.
Murray went to an Esso on Algonquin Boulevard in Timmins, asked the retailer for some help and bought his very first Lotto Max and Lotto 6/49 Quick Pick tickets with Encore.
When he got home, he put the tickets on the fridge as a reminder. Shortly after the draw, Stuart-Flynn heard the jackpot-winning ticket was sold in their area, so she scanned them on her phone while having cereal at the kitchen table.
“I scanned the ticket on the OLG app and heard the ‘Winner/Gagnant’ win tone,” she said in an OLG news release Monday.
“I was in shock and not processing what was happening, so I shut down the OLG App and reopened it. I checked the ticket again and heard the same thing. That’s when I called out to Kyle!”
‘I felt light-headed’
Murray, who is in the financial technology industry and works from home, said he was tied up with work when he heard his wife call for him.
“I looked at her phone and read ‘$70 million winner,’ but I was trying to figure out if it was displaying the maximum prize or if we actually won $70 million,” he said.
“I felt light-headed and that sensation ran through my whole body!”
The first person to hear the news was Murray’s mom. She couldn’t believe what was happening, and the couple decided to take her and their kids for a secret celebration at a local restaurant.
“We wanted to shout the news, but we knew that in our small town, this type of news would travel very fast. We had to be careful not to spill the beans throughout the entire dinner,” Stuart-Flynn said.
Whenever Stuart-Flynn dreamed about winning the lottery, she always said she would buy her sister a new house, and now that’s at the top of her to-do list.
Next, the couple want to ensure that their children have a great life, so they plan to make a special purchase.
“We want to buy some land to set up a little farm with chickens and a highland cow. We hope it will be a place where the kids can have fun and will want to return to as they get older,” Murray said.
“We would not want anyone else by our side during this wild and unexpected experience.”
Next Lotto Max jackpot hits $80M
Murray and Stuart-Flynn’s Lotto Max jackpot win is the sixth jackpot win in a row in Ontario this year, the OLG said.
The provincial lottery gaming corporation hopes that streak continues on Tuesday with the Lotto Max jackpot at $80 million – the first time ever in its history.
Nobody won the $75 million grand prize on Friday, paving the way for Tuesday’s total.
When Lotto Max was first introduced in 2009, a lottery game that offered multiple $50 million jackpots a year was unheard of. Then in 2015, the jackpot cap increased to $60 million, and then to $70 million in 2019. This year, the main cap increased to $80 million.
Lotto Max is drawn every Tuesday and Friday.